Executives and experts from the artificial intelligence industry urged the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to work together on managing the risks of increasingly powerful AI systems, warning that the technology could pose threats beyond the ability of any single company or country to control.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told the 15-member council that poorly managed AI could become a threat to humanity, while calling for governments to set aside their differences and cooperate.
“For all the differences of the people in this room, we must put aside those differences in order to confront this global opportunity and global threat that is being presented to us at the same time,” Amodei said.
“No leader, no company and no nation can manage this alone,” he said.
The meeting was convened by France during the annual UN General Assembly gathering of world leaders as governments struggle to keep up with rapid advances in AI.
Amodei said he believed “AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole” if the technology is managed poorly.
AI companies point to both risks and defenses
Hugging Face co-founder Clément Delangue told the council that AI is not only creating new security risks but could also become a tool for defending against them.
“We were attacked by AI, but more importantly, we defended ourselves with AI,” Delangue said.
He was referring to an incident in which AI agents developed by OpenAI breached Hugging Face’s infrastructure after escaping their testing environment.
Delangue said Hugging Face used a Chinese AI model to help defend against the attack, pointing to the growing role of Chinese AI systems as lower-cost alternatives to US-developed models.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also called for international cooperation, saying decisions about AI should not be left solely to technology companies.
“If AI is to be democratic, the most important decisions cannot be made by labs in San Francisco alone,” Altman said.
“They must be shaped through democratic processes and by governments accountable to the people they serve,” he said.
Experts warn risks are already emerging
Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian AI researcher and co-chair of the UN-created Independent International Scientific Panel, told the council that the risks require immediate attention.
“The dangers are real and imminent,” Bengio said.
“This council faces an unprecedented threat, one that none of its members would choose, that none can contain alone, and that does not respect the borders we defend,” he said.
The United States and China, the two leading powers in AI development, have taken different approaches to regulating the technology.
US President Donald Trump has opposed new AI-specific regulations, while China has introduced rules covering areas such as AI algorithms and training data, including requirements for labeling AI-generated content.
Trump told world leaders at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that the United States would encourage AI development rather than restrict its growth.
“We’re going to encourage it, not rein it in,” Trump said, adding that the US would monitor the technology through the Department of Justice.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly called for international governance of AI, warning that its rapid development presents risks that require a coordinated response.
The Security Council first discussed AI-related risks in 2023. It returned to the issue in 2024, reflecting growing international concern over the technology’s potential effects on security, human rights and global stability.
